From Prodigy to Preservationist

By

Earle Hitchner

Updated March 10, 2011 12:01 a.m. ET

Since 1951, the year of the first All-Ireland competitions at Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann ("Ireland's Festival of Music"), no fiddler has won more solo championships than Clare-born Séamus Connolly, who immigrated to New England in 1976. His 10 titles include two coveted senior championships in 1961 and 1963. He also won the prestigious Fiddler of Dooney title in 1967. Moreover, Mr. Connolly was inducted into the Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann ("Irish Musicians Association") Hall of Fame in 2002 and appointed to an endowed chair as Sullivan Artist-in-Residence at Boston College in 2004.

ENLARGE

Séamus Connolly
Zina Saunders

But the 66-year-old musician—who will perform on March 11 at the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, and on March 12 at Saltwater Farm Vineyard in Stonington, Conn.—cites one honor with particular affection: In 2006, graduating senior Lin Hu invited Mr. Connolly to a Boston College reception celebrating faculty members who made a difference in their students' lives. "I have never been more moved," he said. "As instructors, we never really know what impact we may have on our pupils."

The impact of Mr. Connolly's career is also evident in his roles as a performer, composer, recording artist and producer, and founder and director of Boston College's Gaelic Roots Summer School and Festival, which ran from 1993 to 2003.

"That summer school and festival were the finest of their kind in the United States," said Joe Derrane, a button accordion virtuoso who recorded a highly praised album, "The Boston Edge," with Mr. Connolly and guitar and mandolin player John McGann in 2004. "Séamus's accomplishments are the stuff of legend."

Mr. Connolly's accomplishments got off to a wobbly start, however. In 1954, the 10-year-old attended a party in Clare where several musicians were performing. When a fiddler took a break and left his instrument on a chair, Séamus jumped up on stage. "I grabbed the fiddle and pretended to play," he recalled. "When I returned home, I asked my parents for a fiddle. The one they got for me had fallen behind someone's dresser and had no strings. I strung it and tuned it in fourths instead of fifths, and I never used my little finger because I thought I didn't need to. I was self-taught, learning mainly from 78-rpm recordings that I slowed down on a phonograph so I could pick out all the notes.

"When I finally played for a fiddler from nearby, Tom Touhy, he was shocked. He told me everything I was doing was backwards. I had to start all over again."

Ten months later, with his bad fiddling habits behind him, Séamus won his first All-Ireland solo title in the under-age-14 category. A string of competitive victories then spread his reputation as a fiddling prodigy in Ireland.

Opportunities to record followed, beginning with two tracks Mr. Connolly did for "Rambles of Kitty," a 1966 album. But it was 1973's "The Banks of the Shannon" that confirmed him as one of Ireland's most compelling fiddlers. This "little LP," as it was called, comprised just six tracks (12 tunes in all) by Mr. Connolly, button accordionist Paddy O'Brien and pianist Charlie Lennon. "We recorded it in one hour and 50 minutes," Mr. Connolly said. "That's all the time we were allowed." Even so, it was instantly greeted as a masterpiece.

The first "Masters of the Folk Violin" tour in 1988 put Mr. Connolly on the map in America. Sponsored by the National Council for the Traditional Arts, the tour presented six fiddlers from six genres: Mr. Connolly from Irish traditional music, Kenny Baker from bluegrass, Joe Cormier from Cape Breton music, Michael Doucet from Cajun music, Claude Williams from jazz, and a 16-year-old, long-bow-style player who would later win 26 Grammys as a fiddler and singer: Alison Krauss. "Watching Claude Williams, who was 80 years old at the time, performing alongside Alison Krauss, a teenager, proved there is no generation gap between musicians who are dedicated to excellence," Mr. Connolly said.

That same year, he finally released his solo debut recording, "Notes From My Mind," at age 44. "It took me all that time to make a solo album because I was rarely satisfied with the way I played," he explained. "I'm my own worst critic."

Nevertheless, most of the critics who reviewed the album lauded Mr. Connolly's fiddling and his original reel, "The Bridge at Newtown." His next solo recording, "Here and There," offered equally impressive fiddling and four more tunes composed by him: "Bells of Congress," "The Thirteen Arches," "Thoughts of Carignan," and, in memory of his mother, "I'll Always Remember You." The album was named one of the top five Celtic/British Isles releases of 1989 by the National Association of Independent Record Distributors and Manufacturers.

Also burnishing Mr. Connolly's now global stature were "My Love Is in America," a 1991 CD of 22 live tracks, including six featuring Mr. Connolly, that came from the 1990 Boston College Irish Fiddle Festival; "Warming Up," a 1993 album by Mr. Connolly, Martin Mulhaire, Jack Coen and Felix Dolan; and "Gaelic Roots," a 1997 double-CD release, produced by Mr. Connolly, of 27 performances recorded during the summer school and festival at Boston College.

On campus, Mr. Connolly still teaches a fiddle class, directs the Gaelic Roots Music, Song, Dance, Workshop and Lecture Series, and, with librarian Elizabeth Sweeney, oversees the archives of the Burns Library Irish Music Center, to which he has donated 400 cassettes and numerous reel-to-reel tapes of field recordings. "Séamus is as much beloved for the intensity of his commitment to Irish traditional music as he is revered for his professional abilities," emphasized Thomas Hachey, executive director of Boston College's Center for Irish Programs.

Mr. Connolly's commitment is nowhere more apparent than in the behemoth project now absorbing him: compiling a book of 400 transcribed tunes that 50 musicians will record on companion CDs. So far, 350 tracks have been recorded, of which 200 are in finished form.

"When I was younger, the great Kerry fiddler Julia Clifford invited me to tape her while she played one tune after another, hour after hour," Mr. Connolly said. "Often she would ask, 'You don't have it, do you?' She wanted to be sure that she was adding new tunes to my repertoire and not repeating what I already knew. Julia's amazing generosity was a key reason I undertook my current project.

"I believe talent carries a responsibility to use it well. My memories of musicians like Julia helping me along the way have motivated me to do something similar for others. And if there is any profit from this project, I want it to go to a scholarship for young people to take lessons or attend a summer school in Irish traditional music. I know I've been blessed by it."

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